Subj : Solaris
To   : William McBrine
From : Lawrence Garvin
Date : Sun Oct 29 2000 06:59 am

William McBrine said in a message to Lawrence Garvin:

-=> Lawrence Garvin wrote to William McBrine <=-

 WM> If you judged the currency of a distribution by a book, you'd be
 WM> making a grave error, as the books tend to lag quite a bit.

 LG> COPYRIGHT... William.. COPYRIGHT.. that's the date that established
 LG> that something existed _IN_THAT_YEAR (or perhaps, PRIOR to that year.
 LG> :-)

 WM> Very prior, in this case. The copyright date in a book applies only
 WM> to that book, not the accompanying distro. It usually takes many
 WM> months for the books to catch up once a new version of a distro is
 WM> available -- by which time the distro itself has often moved on to
 WM> another version.

Yes.. William.. all you say is true.. but let's leave technicalities and 
legalities alone for a minute and observe the practicalities...

When the book is published... I think it's safe (and fair) to presume that the 
book is shipping with the LATEST AVAILABLE version... otherwise what's the 
point in publishing the BOOK!

The BOOK was based on the SHIPPING version contained within the book. The book 
plainly is labelled with the notation of what version is contained within - and 
presumably so because it has some marketing value. As such, I content that the 
version shipping with the book as of the copyright date was the lastest version 
available at that time -- else.. the book would have shipped with a later 
version... No?

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 * Origin: lawrence@fido.eforest.net | The Enchanted Forest (1:106/6018)

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